NOVEMBER 2019 7MISCELLANY
http://www.writers-online.co.ukBritish and Commonwealth Forces on Facebook
added a new photo of John Buchan to their album,
Age of Heroes.
John Buchan was known worldwide for The
Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), featuring his own
favourite hero Richard Hannay. The book was
written in the vein of Erskine Childers’ Riddle of the
Sands (1903) as a warning, but by the time it was
published, the 1914-1918 war with Germany had started.
In 100 years the classic thriller has never been out of print. In all,
John Buchan wrote more than 100 books and was a scholar, soldier,
intelligence officer, antiquarian, barrister, colonial administrator,
journal editor, literary critic, publisher, war correspondent, director of
wartime propaganda, Member of Parliament and imperial proconsul.
Given a state funeral when he died on 12 February, 1940, he was a
deeply admired and loved Governor General of Canada. He was survived
by his wife Susan and their four children.
The John Buchan website is http://www.johnbuchansociety.co.ukAND FINALLY: ‘Michael Holroyd
once told the Guardian: ‘What
I really like is rewriting, but you
cannot rewrite until you’ve already
written, and that is terrible. And then
rewriting the rewritten text, and so
on, up to ten times, hoping always
to get it shorter, more condensed,
pack more energy into it. Even if
it’s a sad thing, you want to get the
essence of the most dolorous phrases
and connect them in some way, [and] so in that way try to
perfect something. You have the energy from the first draft,
the momentum, the “go”, but then you try to shape it more.’Helen Brown disclosed in The
Daily Telegraph that Jill Murphy
was only fourteen when she wrote
the first draft of her 1974 book The
Worst Witch. She didn’t look far for
inspiration.
‘Mildred is me,’ she said of her
chaotic young heroine. ‘I was a misfit – I had the
long dark hair in plaits, which were always half undone with bits sticking
out, my shoelaces flapping behind me, my hat on back to front.’
(She also sounds like a caricature of a junior St Trinian’s tearaway.)
Jill explained that the idea of a school for magic came to her one day
when she and two friends arrived home soaked by the rain, and her
mother told them they looked like a trio of witches.
‘It was the best idea I ever had and so easily translatable. The chemistry
lab was for potions, the coats were cloaks, the bikes were broomsticks. It
all fell into place.’DOWNPOUR LED
to bright spell
Early thriller writer John
Buchan remembered
Helen Brown disclosed in
Daily Telegraph
was only fourteen when she wrote
the first draft of her 1974 bookinspiration.AND FINALLY:
once told the Guardian: ‘What
I really like is rewriting, but you
cannot rewrite until you’ve already
written, and that is terrible. And then
rewriting the rewritten text, and so
on, up to ten times, hoping always
to get it shorter, more condensed,
pack more energy into it. Even ifNobel Prize for Literature winner Seamus Heaney (1939-
2013), explaining a ‘Defining Moment’, in the Bloodaxe
Book of Poetry Quotations, edited by Dennis O’Driscoll:
‘Good poetry reminds you that writing is writing, it’s not
just expectoration or self-regard or a semaphore for self ’s
sake. You want it to touch you at the melting point below
the breastbone and the beginning of the solar plexus. You
want something sweetening and at the same time something
unexpected, something that has come through constraint
into felicity.’Poetry’s
melting point
Geraint Lewis/Writer PicturesGeraint Lewis/Writer PicturesAdvice from Frederick Forsyth,
81, for those who wish to follow
him into the writing business...
The author of The Day of The
Jackalackalackal, The Odessa File and The
Dogs of War once advised: ‘Stick
with the job you’ve got. Don’t
jack in a perfectly good job that
pays the rent, until, at least, you have your first one out,
and in print, and you can judge whether you are going to
be a professional novelist who can look after your family
with what is earned as a novelist,’ he added.
A lot of people are one-novel writers, he said.
Second, if you are going to write in your spare time -
prepare. ‘Don’t have one smart idea that will actually occupy
four sheets of paper; sit down and try and write 400 sheets
about that one idea. Work out your story... There’s no way I
could sit down at a typewriter when I don’t even know quite
what’s going to happen.’Tips from
a master
Geraint Lewis/Writer Pictures